The present application claims, under 35 U.S.C. § 119, the benefit of Korean Patent Application No. P03-097706 filed Dec. 26, 2003, the entire contents of which are herein fully incorporated by reference.
1. Field of the invention
The present invention relates to a media dispenser. More particularly, the present invention relates to a media transfer method and apparatus, which enables media to be separated, sheet by sheet, and discharged with a uniform transfer interval from a media cassette of the media dispenser.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the present specification, the term “media” refers to sheet materials, such as bank notes, checks, tickets, certificates, etc. The term “media dispenser” refers to an apparatus which automatically supplies such media according to a customer's demand.
FIG. 1 shows a media cassette and a construction for drawing media out of the media cassette, which are employed in a related art media dispenser. A media cassette 1, shown in FIG. 1, is installed in the automatic media dispenser. The media cassette 1 may be either integrated with or separately formed from the automatic media dispenser.
Media m are arranged and stacked in the media cassette 1. In the media cassette 1, the media m are pushed toward a discharge port by a push plate 3, so that they are located in tight contact with each other. The push plate 3 is supported by a spring 5 so as to push the media. The spring 5 provides an elastic force which enables the push plate 3 to push the media.
Each sheet of the media, pushed toward the discharge port by the push plate 3, comes into tight contact with a pickup roller 7 before passing through the discharge port. The pickup roller 7 is located at one end of the media cassette 1, comes into contact with and separates each sheet of the media from the stack, and then moves the separated sheet out of the media cassette 1. The pickup roller 7 may be formed either integrally with the media cassette 1, or separately from the media cassette 1 in the automatic media dispenser.
A feed roller 9 and a contra-roller 10 are disposed close to, and opposed to, each other, so as to promote separation of each sheet of the media from another sheet and transfer the separated sheet. That is, the media are separated and transferred one sheet at a time by the feed roller 9 and the contra-roller 10, while each sheet passes through a gap between the feed roller 9 and the contra-roller 10 rotating in the same direction.
Each sheet of the media, after having passed through the gap between the feed roller 9 and the contra-roller 10, is further transferred by another feed roller or a belt of a delivery module (not shown).
However, the aforementioned related art has the following problems.
In general, one revolution of the pickup roller 7 separates one sheet of the media and transfers the separated sheet into the gap between the feed roller 9 and the contra-roller 10. However, the related art media dispenser may be used for dispensing media of various sizes. Therefore, when the related art media dispenser employs a pickup roller 7 having a fixed size, intervals between transferred sheets of media may be different according to the sizes of the media.
For example, some media may have a size, such as a width, which allows too small an interval between adjacent sheets of the media being transferred. In an extreme case, the media may be overlapped, as in a chain, without an interval between them when transferred. In other words, the related art media dispenser provides non-uniform quality in dispensing media, which changes according to the size of the media.